Old photographs can make a stranger inside your family become visible.

A photograph taken before you existed introduces you to someone you have known your whole life. Your grandmother at nineteen, laughing at something outside the frame, is not the person you remember; she is a stranger who happens to have the same face and a life you know nothing about. Families contain these unmet people, and they only come into view through pictures and stories.

Ask about one photograph while there is somebody who can still answer. Who took it, what happened that day, who is the person at the edge. If nobody is left to ask, writing down what you do remember is still worth the hour.